The former president and co-founder of Gigabit Squared, a company that has apparently lost a contract to help bring gigabit broadband to Seattle, has resigned from any role in the company’s operations.

Former Facebook CTO Adam D’Angelo believes that the future is about creating more knowledge and adding a layer of reputation to the fast-growing internet. And that is why he started Quora, his first real attempt at being a startup CEO.

With current broadband market is essentially a comfortable duopoly of cable and telecom operators with little competitive pressure that leads to forward looking features. It is no surprise that cities are looking to take matters in their own hands taking a cue from Bristol, Tennessee.

Fiber network are costly, in part because digging trenches to lay the conduit are so expensive. Stringing fiber along telephone poles is cheaper, but has its own issues. A new company claims its drill digs a fiber trench for the cost of an aerial deployment.

History demonstrates that in order to build world-class infrastructure, be it railroads or electricity, a mutually beneficial commitment between communities and the providers of that infrastructure is, and has always been, essential. It is no different for communications.

The FCC doesn’t seem to realize it’s summer. The regulatory agency has been issuing decisions like crazy. And this week it also released a series of questions that indicate the FCC is thinking about the need for faster broadband speeds and questioning caps.

Want to control your community’s broadband? Then you you have to own the process that determines how the technology is used, as Kansas City might be learning to its chagrin after Google didn’t seem keen a proposal for community Wi-Fi in one section of the city.

Last week’s announcement that a $200 million broadband investment fund is in play courtesy of Gigabit Squared is part of a quiet trend of communities searching for new ways to fund broadband. From promissory notes to bonds, towns are building networks in new ways.

When is a gigabit not a gigabit? Perhaps when it’s Google’s gigabit network? Speaking today at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Google’s Chairman Eric Schmidt said that the company’s planned fiber to the home network will deliver sustained speeds of between 300 to 500 Mbps.

Sonic.net, an independent ISP in San Francisco, plans to roll out a gigabit network to the city, putting the hub of today’s tech and web community on equal footing with Chattanooga, Tenn., and eventually both sides of Kansas City, where Google plans to lay fiber.

Long-haul networks aren’t the only pipes getting 100 gigabit upgrades these days. On Tuesday Verizon said it is upgrading the metro networks in at least seven U.S. cities to meet the demand for broadband at the edge. Looks like we’re closing in on the terabit age.

One of the benefits of D.C.’s 100 gigabit network is that it should open eyes to the importance of middle mile infrastructure, but it’s not clear how many last mile projects will spring up to connect to it. How DC-CAN resolves this could influence federal policy.

Washington D.C. went live with the first link of a 100-gigabit network Wednesday. The new network, called the D.C. Community Access Network, will provide links out to communities east of the Anacostia River, but the ultra-high-speed network will soon serve the entire District.

Quantenna, a startup building chips for sending massive data over Wi-Fi, has built the first gigabit chip for Wi-Fi networks and devices. The chip is available now for use in routers, home gateways and even consumer gadgets. Products containing the chips could arrive in 2012.

Two news headlines of note this week highlight the challenges of getting what you wish for, especially if what you wished for is a gigabit network. One shows a community that’s reached a broadband objective, the latter reflects another’s uncertainty about what its objectives are.

CityFibre, a London-based telecom operator, wants to raise $800 million to build a fiber-to-the-home network and compete with British Telecom in the race to wire up Britain with super-fast networks. It’s one of the many upstarts with big dreams for big and fast networks.

The folks at the Kauffman Foundation have teamed up with Google to create a portal where folks can submit their ideas for gigabit application that could use the proposed fiber to the home network that Google plans to build in both Kansas Cities. Lucky them.

Sure, Sprint will deliver LTE-Advanced in 2013, a standard that can offer gigabit speeds on fixed networks, but Samsung is talking about ways we can get multi-gigabit wireless networks. These are wireless networks that are faster than today’s wired ones.

Last week I visited two Kansas Cities – in Kansas and Missouri – on a broadband site visit. When I went to Chattanooga, Tenn., I got an “after” picture of what communities can do with a gigabit. The Kansas City trip was about figuring out the “before.”

Two days in Chattanooga, Tenn. show how a municipal broadband network can pay dividends when community leaders focus on the applications a gigabit network can deliver and consider the long-term economic development potential. And yes, it can even generate enough revenue to become profitable.

Last September Chattanooga, Tenn.’s public utility (EPB) announced the first gigabit broadband service in the U.S. To fully grasp the economic power of true broadband, community leaders and broadband champions need look under the hood to get the inside scoop.Here’s what gigabit networks can do.